Fontshop have just released an online font design and creation tool called Fonstruct. It is fantastic. It was devised and developed for FontShop by Rob Meek, a designer/programmer based in Berlin. Meek has been working on projects like this for quite sometime before joining forces with FontShop.

The Fontstruct interface seems easy to use and there are lots of simple clever functions to make the job of font creation easier. Additional functionality such as the ability to share your font with others via a Creative Commons licence, or to create an embedded Flash version for display on your personal website show how Fontshop have really made the effort to integrate with the best of other successful web technologies and services.

As an educational tool for would be typographers, type designers and design students, it presents a wonderful learning opportunity. It presents a simple entry point to understanding the basics of letterform design and construction without the steep technical learning curve of other professional type design software. It is easy to see how this tool could be integrated with traditional methods of teaching and learning. For example, take a look at Ellen Lupton’s modular type design exercise in her book Thinking with Type as proof of this. I look forward to experimenting with it in class in the next academic year to see how it can augment and extend current curricula.

Earlier last year, Jeff Han made a great presentation at TED of his “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. Since then, the current demo for this multi-touch driven computer screen is truly amazing. It makes the touch screen UI features of Apple’s iPhone look almost quaint!

When TED released the video on youTube it was downloaded a quarter of a million times, and everyone who has seen it, instantly wants one. Its easy to imagine using it at home or at work. It represents the pinacle of the ‘new wave’ in screen technologies, from Wii’s to iPhones, this is the holy grail. I wonder if Lev Manovich is writing the book about it as we speak.

And as for typography on a screen like this, ooooh, you could touch it, roll it, squash it, zoom it, push it, throw it…

With all of the recent web typography developments: new Vista fonts, CT coming into its own with the launch of Vista and Microsoft licensing its TrueType rasterizer to Ascender; David Berlow’s announcement that he has a better solution to anything that the big players have come up with, sounded like a bit of shocker! Roger Black’s interview with Berlow, titled ‘Opening Shots in the Second Type War’, steps through Berlow’s idea to create multiple master outlines for each type size to avoid having to use crude anti-aliasing technologies. This is a crude summary of his argument, read the full interview for details.

But Berlow’s concept is refreshingly simple, so naturally one has to ask, why hasn’t anyone proposed this as a solution for web typography? Having been to Bruno Maag’s talk in Dublin on Thursday night, it sounds like it might be too expensive to get a type designer to draw separate outlines for each size? But then again, according to Maag, hinting is also a laborious and tiresome process. Perhaps licensing and file size are the main issues?

I also wondered if Berlow was suggesting that as web designers and publishers we should propose the use of just three type sizes? From a graphic design perspective, this made me think of typographic exercises, designed to teach traditional principles in the early stages when one starts to study typography. There are many examples of classic typography manuals with exercises based around the restraint of using three type sizes. It would be nice from a design ‘control’ perspective if this became general good practice.

Let’s see if any of the big guns take up Berlow’s gauntlet.

Not for the first time, I have some anxiety about latest and greatest technology and software releases. This time Microsoft is causing that anxiety. Because of their market share, the release of Vista yesterday was a big deal, though it seemed generally underwhelming compared with the ‘it factor‘ of the iPhone and also, because a lot of what Gates was hailing as new, has already been done and is available via other technologies and software applications. However, what is upsetting me is the few sneaky inclusions in Vista, that demonstrate how Microsoft is yet again trying to use its market share to obliterate the competition. It happened before with Explorer and Netscape’s Navigator, remember that? Anyway, thank God for Firefox. This is par for the course in the general scheme of a capitalist economy but what is really annoying is that Microsoft’s offering is not new nor is their own idea.

XPS is Microsoft’s version of Adobe’s PDF. Here is their description, does it sound familiar?

‘The XML Paper Specification (XPS) makes modern documents possible for all. Simply put, XPS describes electronic paper in a way that can be read by hardware, read by software, and read by humans. With XPS, documents print better, can be shared easier, be archived with confidence, and are more secure.

Microsoft has integrated XPS-based technologies into the 2007 Microsoft Office system and the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system, but XPS itself is platform independent, openly published, and available royalty-free. Microsoft is using XPS to bring additional document value to its customers, its partners, and the computing industry.

For the IT professional, Windows Vista enables you to design document workflows that allow you to identify, digitally sign, and manage the access and distribution rights of your documents by using XPS Documents and documents created with 2007 Microsoft Office system applications.’

Microsoft is attempting to replace an existing and widely used format with its own proprietary document format but it doesn’t seem to offer any real benefits over PDF. They are going to include a “Save as XPS” option in their upcoming Office 12 product, so users won’t have to install anything extra (even though ‘Save as PDF’ already exists in current version). The automatic ability to view XPS files in Explorer 7 compared with using something like Acrobat Reader or installing a PDF browser plugin will also probably help XPS gain popularity.

Either way, I feel uneasy, the ground is shifting again and I am not sure its for the better. We all want competition, we all support the small enterprise and don’t want unfair competition (not that Adobe isn’t huge too). But we all want a standard format because its such a pain to have to design and modify content for so many variable displays.

Last week Quark Xpress came to the college where I teach, they were demo’ing the lastest release and really pushing hard to sell it to students. The latest bolt-ons for web and motion graphics are crude and you have to wonder why the did it (Adobe’s Creative Suite, of course). I am of the generation who grew up on Quark, its simplicity and dedication to detail in one area was always its appeal. Now I am wondering whether it can even hope to compete against Adobe’s InDesign.

As for XPS versus PDF, it won’t be designers that decide. Good luck…